Exiled Villainess: They Threw Me Out, Now Every Beastman Wants Me

Ermin had not bathed in days, and it was starting to bother him.

The fever had left him feeling like he had been rolled in dirt, dipped in sweat, and left to marinate in his own misery. His fur felt matted in his beast form, and his skin felt grimy in his human one. The sensation was unbearable for someone who had always been meticulous about cleanliness.

It also didn’t help that Xavi had apparently also been tending to him while he was unconscious.

When Tera had casually mentioned that the clan leader had changed his cooling cloths, checked his temperature, and sat with him through some parts of the day and night, Ermin had not known what to do with his face.

The clan leader, whom he had been mentally competing with for weeks, had wiped sweat off his forehead while he slept.

Like a cub.

Ermin wanted to crawl into a hole and never resurface.

So, when the evening came, and a group of males headed to the lake to wash themselves, Ermin went along with them. He needed to feel clean, needed to feel like himself again. And he needed to stop thinking about how Tera’s hands had felt against his skin when she was pressing herbs to his chest.

That last thought followed him the entire walk and refused to leave.

As they approached the lake, Ermin was already pulling his hide loose when he looked up and caught sight of the females bathing on the other side.

He stopped short when he saw Tera.

She stood in the shallows with two other females, water lapping at her waist. Her eyes were closed. A cub perched on one of the females’ hips was enthusiastically splashing water toward her, and Tera was laughing, turning her face away from the spray. Water ran down her neck, over her collarbones, and between her bare breasts.

Tera wiped the water from her eyes, and Ermin saw her smile.

His chest did something inconvenient.

Droplets ran down her neck and across her collarbones, catching the warm light of the evening sun, and Ermin’s gaze dropped before he could stop it.

He had not seen her body properly. In the cave, it had been somewhat dark, and he had barely focused on her body asides feeling it. All the heat and sensation hadn’t given him time to properly appreciate it.

She was... beautiful.

She was even more beautiful than Naiya.

How?

That thought hit even harder, and Ermin felt something close to betrayal—except he wasn’t sure who he was betraying anymore.

The way she laughed at the cub’s splashing was a bit mesmerising, along with how she looked at the cub and the females without the calculating stare of the female who had once terrorized the Jackdaw tribe.

Tera was smaller than most females, and softer in places that made his mouth go dry. Her breasts were full, and the curve of her waist dipped inward before flaring into hips he remembered gripping. When she lifted her arms to push wet hair from her face, the movement made everything shift in a way that sent heat straight to his groin.

He should have turned away the moment he saw her.

Because when Tera wiped water from her eyes and opened them, she glanced in his direction. For a second, their gazes locked across the lake. Surprise flickered across her face. Ermin’s ears flattened. He jerked his head away so hard his neck nearly cracked.

What was wrong with him?

He should control himself. Maybe Tera wasn’t evil anymore, but the imprint had to be what was influencing what he was feeling towards her.

As he moved to join the other males, his mind once again drifted to how Tera’s body had curves that his hands suddenly remembered touching.

He forced the reaction down with pure will, making sure his body did not to harden in front of the other males.

But he was still thinking of her, and how she had tended to him and said nice things when she thought he wasn’t conscious.

It could be that her apology in front of the clan back then hadn’t been fake.

She had also nursed him for three days and taken care of him, and nobody had been watching then.

These thoughts were the first cracks in his defences.

Ermin stripped and moved into the water.

And much to his annoyance, the other males had noticed Tera too.

”The shiftless one is not so bad to look at,” the jackal beast said, his eyes still fixed on the females across the river. ”I do not understand why the leader is so stingy with her. He keeps her all to himself.”

The male beside him snickered. ”She may be shiftless, but her body is—”

”She has done a lot for us,” another beast man spoke up with a sharp tone. ”You should not talk about her like that.”

The jackal waved him off. ”I am only saying—”

The growl that came from Ermin’s throat was so low and so sudden that all four males went silent.

Ermin hadn’t decided to growl. His body had done it without consultation, the sound ripping out of his chest with a ferocity that shocked even him.

The jackal’s grin vanished. He turned to Ermin with wide eyes.

”Don’t talk about her like that.” Ermin glared at him. ”And stop looking at her.”

Ermin had also been about to blurt out that Tera was also his mate, and it irritated him how they were only talking as if Xavi had a claim to her. But he stopped short at the thought, alarmed that he was even about to say that.

The silence that followed was thick enough to drown in.

The jackal stared at him. ”You are defending her? After what she did to you?”

Ermin himself had the same stunned look the others gave him. He tried to scramble for an answer, but none of the excuses he could come up with made any sense.

Why was he defending that female?